Adrian Kline indicted on pawn violations

By Pierrette J. Shields Longmont Times-Call

Posted:
02/28/2012 12:51:29 PM MST

Updated:
03/01/2012 08:54:04 AM MST

Adrian Kline

LONGMONT -- A Brighton man is accused of using his position as a contract embalmer in the Denver metro area to steal gold teeth from bodies and cremated remains and pawn them in Longmont and other cities, according to police reports.

A Boulder County Grand jury indicted Adrian David Kline, 43, on suspicion of eight counts of providing false information to a pawn broker and two counts of providing false information to a secondhand dealer. He turned himself in Feb. 24.

According to Longmont police reports, Kline is suspected of removing gold crowns from bodies prior to embalming and removing dental gold from cremated remains.

Longmont pawn brokers noticed that he was pawning dental gold repeatedly and thought it was "creepy" and "weird" and called police.

In September, a broker on the 300 block of Main Street called Longmont police to report the pawning of gold teeth. She said that after he had pawned teeth at her store twice in one month, she asked where he was getting them. She told police he reported that he either worked for a mortuary or crematory and that the teeth were normally "just thrown away," so he was retrieving them and was selling them to raise money for "children in need," according to Longmont police reports.

He said he normally sold the teeth at another store on the 300 block of Main Street. Police searched the store's records from July and found a photo of Kline's driver's license along with a baggie of 20 to 25 gold teeth, according to reports. A search of his pawn history in the past three years revealed dozens of transactions worth thousands of dollars in Longmont, Brighton and Lakewood, police reported.

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Police investigated Kline's employment history and found that he worked at multiple funeral homes in Brush, Lakewood and Canon City. Police found that Kline had most recently worked for Aspen Mortuaries in Lakewood on a contract, as-needed basis since October 2010 and served as a nighttime embalmer who worked alone. The owners reported he would not have had direct access to cremated remains but would have had access to metals and items sifted from the remains for placement in a recycling container. Aspen Mortuaries recycles the items and uses rebate checks for pro bono work or to donate to charity, police reported. The owners told detectives that Kline did not have authorization to take any items, but they knew he was desperate financially as the father of eight children.

Kline spoke with investigators and said the home was throwing away the items and that they were not being returned to the families or used otherwise, "but he knew the dental gold had value." He said he waited for the box of items to be thrown away, retrieved it from the trash and "would then take the box home and sift through the remains, which consisted of screws, bone anchors, and other miscellaneous metal." He told investigators that the dental gold was difficult to recognize because it was covered in "black crud." His wife told investigators that he bought a cleaning kit and gold testing kit and would meticulously clean the teeth for pawn. She said it did not yield much money, but it helped to pay the bills, according to reportsKline said he was embarrassed at what he had to do to provide for his family, according to reports.

The funeral home owners told police that the gold was not thrown out, but was set aside for recycling and that, after examining photos of the gold recycled, that there was no way that all of the gold in the photos had gone through the cremating process. Kline said he pawned one of his own teeth and a baggie he received from his family. He denied ever removing teeth directly from a body. Patrick Rice, owner of Tabor Rice funeral home, told detectives that he hired Kline in June 2010, intending to train him as a funeral director but fired him after he lost jewelry that belonged to a deceased client.

"Patrick had concerns about Adrian from the beginning and felt like something was not quite right," according to reports.

Rice told police Kline was in training during his entire employment at Tabor Rice Funeral Home and would not have had sole access to any of the bodies in the business' care. He also told police that any sale of gold taken from bodies would be a company violation.

Valuables and metals removed from bodies are either supposed to be disposed of or recycled, according to investigators.

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